A/N A partner chapter that kind of follows on from Changing Rooms.

The floor was cold on her bare feet as she stepped cautiously along the corridor. Why was everything so dark? She could barely see the walls on either side of her, just having to trust her other senses to warn her if she was about to walk into something. But somehow she knew she was in a corridor. How did that work? Actually, 'where the heck was she?' might've been a better question – could she even remember arriving, the journey she'd taken to get to this spot, now, standing in a darkened hallway with bare feet and the smell of antiseptic in her nose?

It always made her feel uneasy. The smell, that was. It made her heart quicken up, ready to supply as much oxygen as possible to her muscles if things came down to fighting or running away; she could almost hear the pounding in her chest as she took a few more steps along the corridor, feeling slightly lightheaded what with the adrenaline and the nerves and the smell and the… wrongness. It was just all wrong. She was in some building she didn't recognise, with no memory of how she'd reached it, and no idea how to get out or why she might be there in the first place.

And where was her flock? Where was her family? Had they been captured, were they hurt?

Max felt the muscles in her back tighten and she whipped around, staring back along the hallway behind her. Not that it did any good – she could barely see her own hand in front of her face – but she was certain she'd sensed something there. Standing dead still, she strained her ears for any sound.

There!

Was that it? Was that a slight shuffling coming from the darkness, a barely-audible sigh of someone – something – else's breath?

Heat flooded Max's face, her heartbeat thudding in her ears as she felt fear trying to arch its way across the curve of her head and down her back. She shivered, forcing herself to turn around and keep walking. Her body wailed in protest, muscles tensing, stomach clenching, but she told herself that there wasn't anything else she could do; if there was something behind her then she'd rather walk away from it than towards it, and until she managed to find a way to turn some lights on in this place she wouldn't be able to see for sure if there was anything there at all. Of course, if it attacked her then that would move things along a bit, but that was something she'd have to deal with if or when it happened.

As she walked, the sweeping sense of fear and unease just got worse. The smell was intensifying, making its way through her nose into the back of her mouth where it stuck, feeling as though it was choking her. The further along the corridor she got, the more disturbingly familiar it seemed, but somehow she still couldn't place the memory of where she was; it was as if that part of her mind had been censored, the thoughts pixelated and covered over, until all she could make out was a fuzzy mash of ideas that didn't quite make sense but at the same time made her feel kind of sick with dread.

Max's ears picked up another shuffle that may or may not have been real, may or may not have just been her imagination, and she started moving a little faster, not worrying so much anymore about walking into anything. Her breaths were coming quickly now, her eyes boring into the blackness ahead of her as if she might be able to pierce her way through it. Was this what Iggy lived with all the time?

She hit a wall.

Lights flashed on.

Max whirled around, almost gagging on the smell which seemed to have suddenly hit its peak.

And she knew where she was.

'It's the School!'

Fang was jolted awake by the cry, his gaze snapping straight to Max as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. Her eyes were still closed, but her face was twisting, twitching as she slept, the bed covers winding around her legs as her whole body jerked under the weight of the night terror.

'It's the School!' she cried again, her head shaking violently from side to side like she was trying to throw the dream off her. 'No, no, no, no, I can't! Don't… Don't, please… I- I can't… I didn't mean to!'

Worry made Fang grit his teeth; Dr Martinez had explained these to him, to both of them, saying that they were just a result of the stress that Max had been through working on her subconscious, that they'd die down after a while, but that didn't make it any easier to watch.

'Max,' he said quietly, reaching a hand out towards her. He ran through a mental list of the list things Dr Martinez had told him to do when the night terrors happened: 'don't raise your voice, keep calm'; 'don't mention anything that could be frightening to her, even if it's to say that it's not real'; 'touch her if she'll let you, but don't force anything – if she runs away, follow her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself, but don't try to stop her'; 'no attempting to wake her up, it'll just make her panic more'; 'keep telling her that she's safe, she's at home, you're there – the calmer you can make her feel, the quicker she'll come out of it'.

Max had rolled her eyes at all that, sending a mock glare at Fang as if to say she didn't need to be looked after. But that was only after the first one, back when there was a chance that it had been a one-off, that it would never happen again. Dr Martinez's words were meant to be precautionary more than anything, just in case.

Then another one had hit two nights later, and another the night after. They'd been living in the house for just over a month, and the longest Max had gone without having a night terror had been about six days.

Fang's hand was hit away fiercely just as his fingertips brushed against her hair. He took in a deep breath, steadying himself, feeling a frown pull down at the corners of his mouth as he watched Max's face twist in fear.

'Max, you're okay,' he said, his voice quiet and steady, reaching towards her again and resting his hand gently on her head. 'You're alright, you're not in the-… You're not in that place, you're at home, everything's fine…'

His words were punctuated with Max's own cries, and as her head jerked to the side again he felt the cold sweat that had broken out on her brow, but he kept talking, repeating the same things over and over in a low, measured murmur that he hoped she could hear on some level.

Fang felt his breath shaking a little in his chest; he hated it, hated feeling so helpless, so unable to do anything for her. This was Max, the girl he'd grown up with and fought next to and managed to fall in love with along the way and God, he was supposed to look after her. Not that he'd ever say that to her face, of course, but he was.

And right now he couldn't.

'No!'

His hand was flung aside again as Max suddenly sat bolt upright, the shout ripping from her throat as her eyes flew open. Her breaths came quick and panicked, her stare unseeing, unrecognising, even as Fang shifted where he sat so that he was that bit closer to her; she was still asleep, still locked inside her own mind.

She felt as though she was suffocating on fear, watching them all move towards her, all so familiar, all horribly, unbearably hurt: Iggy's jaw hung open, dangling, the bone broken, held on only by the skin that covered it; Gazzy stumbled forwards with a hole gaping in his abdomen, blood spilling out from between his fingers as he pressed a hand against his wound; Angel's movements were lurching, broken, just like her wrecked body, crushed by the force of a whole building collapsing on top of her; Nudge slid across the floor on her stomach, her back bent at a grotesque angle, using only her hands to pull herself forwards.

'Please…' Max begged, barely able to choke the word out. 'I can't…' Tears burned in her throat, her eyes, blurring the sight of her flock staggering towards her.

'But you let this happen,' said Gazzy, his words coming out as a groan of pain as he moved.

'No, no, I didn't mean to!'

Her back hit the wall and Max felt ready to throw up. The tears were coming fast now, making tracks down her face as her eyes darted wildly between each of her flock members, her arms wrapped around herself.

And then her mom was there, standing next to her as if nothing was wrong, gaze fixed on the advancing flock members.

'Honey, do you want me to make them go away for you?'

She couldn't. She couldn't tell her mother to make her flock leave, to make them go away. They were her family. But now she was shaking hard, barely holding back screams as waves of fear like she'd never felt before threatened to overwhelm her. How could this be happening? How could she be feeling like this, how could her flock be so horrifically injured, how could they all be back in the School? And they were still stumbling forwards, slow, faulty,

Her mom was looking at her, waiting for an answer to her question.

'Mom, help me. I don't know wha-… I don't know, please, I can't, help me!' Max cried, her voice coming out loud with fright, raspy with tears.

'Okay, darling,' her mom replied. 'I'm going to make it all go away.'

And a gun was in her hand, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, pointing at Iggy as he took another step, his jaw still dangling horribly.

'No!' Max shouted, a hand coming up to grab at her mom's arm.

'But they're a problem, Max. They need to be dealt with.'

It wasn't real. It couldn't be. It was a nightmare, a bad dream, some kind of crazy simulation, anything. It just couldn't be real. Her chest felt tight, like something was holding her in a vice-like grip, and her breath was coming in hard gasps as she tried to fight against what was happening. Not real, not real, not real…

'Where's Fang?' she asked suddenly, the words almost echoing along the corridor. 'I need… Where…? I don't know what to do!'

'Oh, honey,' her mom said, sounding as if she was talking to a small child. 'Fang left, didn't he? He's not here.'

Max shook her head hard, clutching at her temple with one hand.

'No, no no no no, he said he wouldn't. 'The next time I leave you will be the day I die.' He said that, he did!'

Her mom gave an airy laugh.

'Of course, my mistake. There he is.'

And there he was, standing behind the rest of the now-stationary flock, his gaze firm and steady on her face, telling her it was okay, he was there.

'But he is going to leave you today. So I guess that means he needs to die.'

Then a shot rang out, a hole was suddenly barely visible in the dark fabric of Fang's shirt; his knees buckled, and as he fell Max heard herself screaming, heard herself shouting his name, then the names of all the others as time slowed down and she watched them get shot too, shot with bullets from the gun in her mother's hand, and alarms were blaring around her and she was on the ground feeling paralysed by the pain and the fear, and there was voice yelling in her head that she could barely distinguish from her own desperate, ragged, shattered thoughts.

Max was crying now, shouting out broken parts of sentences that Fang was sure must have been carrying through to the others' rooms. But he knew no one would come in; Dr Martinez had made it pretty clear that the more people there were crowding around, the worse things would get. Hence why he'd been given all the instructions about what to do when these things happened – if one person was going to look after Max, it might as well be the one who was pretty much guaranteed to be right there when everything kicked off, right?

'Fang! Fang, please, make it stop, please! Nudge is… And Angel… I- How is…? Fang, I need… Please, please…'

She sat there, fingers twisted together, eyes wide and glazed, her whole body shaking as she rocked back and forth. Fang gripped hard at the sheets beneath him with one hand, biting down on his tongue and using the pain to try and ground himself; seeing her like this was just so wrong. It hurt, an almost physical pain down in his gut that wrenched harder with each second that he sat watching her, Max, Max, being assaulted by things he couldn't see, couldn't fight for her.

'I'm here,' he whispered. 'I'm right here with you, Max, you're okay, you're safe, nothing's going to hurt you here. It's just you and me, right here, Max, you hear that? You and me, just us, no one else. And we're okay. I've got you, you're alright.'

She looked at him then, staring at him, her eyes seeming huge in the dark of the room. For a moment he thought she might recognise him, might be waking up, but then her whole body tensed hard enough to make her jerk back a little and terror etched itself into her face again.

'Don't go! No, I need- I need you! Please, Fang, stop, stop it!'

Her hands were swatting at the air, grabbing her night clothes, pulling her hair, leaving nail marks across her face as she grasped at her own skin, trying to hide herself, to shield her head from whatever she was seeing. She bent forwards, leaning down far enough for her forehead to touch the bed covers, then almost immediately she had snapped back up again, taking in one huge gasp of air before falling still.

Slowly, watching Max closely for any changes, Fang laid his hand over hers. She turned, and as she looked at him her face seemed to crumple in on itself, then she was sobbing, her shoulders shaking with the force of it.

'I can't do this.'

The words were whispered, only just audible, but they came out sounding so completely heartbroken that Fang almost couldn't breathe for a moment. Max didn't say things like that. She just didn't. So what the hell could she be seeing to make her that scared, that defenceless?

'You can. You can do this.'

Taking a chance, Fang pulled her in closer to him, one hand still holding hers, the other coming up to brush at her cheek even as she shook her head.

'I can't do it. I- I need Fang, please, I need… and he's not… and I can't do it. I don't know, and…' She seemed to choke a little, drawing in a strangled breath. 'They're all gone. They're all gone.'

Leaning into him, she rested her forehead against him shoulder, letting him wrap his arms around her.

'I'm right here, I've got you now. You can do it, it's okay…'

Fang wasn't entirely sure exactly what he was saying for half the time, just letting his mouth run in a way he'd never done before up until recently. After a few minutes Max's breathing slowed, and a little while later he felt the tension leave her, felt her wake up.

'Fang?'

Her voice floated up to him, slightly muffled.

'Yeah.'

'Another one, then?'

He breathed in slowly through his nose.

'Yeah.'

Max pulled away from him, pushing both hands back through her hair to get it out of her face. She looked like her again; she'd lost the glaze of fear and the unseeing stare had gone from her eyes.

'Well, that sucked,' she muttered, and he linked their fingers together, rubbing his thumb lightly against hers.

'You remember?'

She shook her head.

'No. But I feel kinda shaky and I think my heart's going at about a hundred miles per hour.' A pause. 'It wasn't good, at any rate.'

'Not at all.'

Conversation always felt strange after one of Max's night terrors, like they were both trying to stay superficial about it, to make it seem like nothing important. But her hand was still trembling in his, and she was staring at the bed covers in front of her, haunted by something she couldn't even remember.

'What was it about this time?'

Fang felt his eyebrows come together at her question. She asked it every time, as if she thought that maybe if she could work out what she was dreaming about then she'd be able to stop it from happening.

'You said you were at the School, mentioned Nudge and Angel. Don't know what I was doing, but you told me to stop at one point. Then you said you couldn't do it and that they were all gone.'

'What were all gone?'

He shrugged, tucking a strand of her hair back behind her ear.

'So it was pretty much the same old thing, huh?' She sighed, sounding slightly exasperated. 'You know, you'd think that if my subconscious was gonna torture me in my sleep, it could at least shake things up a bit, get some variety.'

The corner of Fang's mouth twitched up. He knew she was forcing herself to make jokes, make it appear as if she wasn't bothered, but it was good to hear the sarcasm in her voice.

For a moment neither of them moved, sitting in silence, then Max lifted the hand that was intertwined with Fang's, pulling his fingers up to her lips as she continued staring at the bed sheets. Her breath was warm across his knuckles. After a few seconds, Fang raised his other hand to her shoulder and gave her a light nudge, bringing her with him as he lay back down, wrapping his arms around her as they went so that by the time their heads had reached the pillows she was pressed against his chest.

A couple of minutes went by, then Max's voice whispered into the quiet again:

'Thank you.'

'Hey, it's what I do.'

She laughed a bit at that, jabbing him gently in the ribs.

'Apparently so.'

They didn't say anything else after that, and before long Fang felt Max's breathing deepen, her body relaxing against his as she fell back into sleep.

Yep, he thought. I've got you. Just you and me.

A/N Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season! :)